On October 19th a large amount of students from Stockton College and people in the Atlantic City community got together in front of the Rain Forest Café on the Atlantic City boardwalk at 9:00am to participate in the Atlantic City Beach Sweep. We all stood there listening to brief speeches on why Clean Ocean Action hosts beach sweeps and what you can do to stay involved. As you may have guessed, they host beach sweeps to keep the beaches clean and help keep the environment healthy and clean and to help the marine life thrive.
After these speeches, we got into groups of two and three, grabbed some trash bags, a few recycle bags, a t-shirt, and a checklist and walked on the beach eager to get started. Each time we saw some trash, we picked it up and checked off what we picked up. The point of checking off the items and keeping track of how many of each thing we picked up was so that it can be tallied and recorded for future reference. We were informed that each time a beech sweep is done, the information on the trash picked up is recorded and from that there have been many laws and regulations passed to help prevent trash build up and pollution on the beaches.
After picking up garbage for about two and a half hours, we all carried our full bags up to the boardwalk and took pictures to savor the moment. While we were taking pictures the Barenaked Ladies set up and got ready to perform a small show for all of the people who worked to clean up the beach that morning. They helped out on the beach sweep but were pretty sneaky about it. Spotting them was definitely the challenge of the day. Yet, when it was all over they sang their hearts out for us performing almost every request and making jokes the whole time about the trash.
After they finished performing, we all whistled and clapped thanking them for playing just for us and for their help cleaning up the beach. It didn’t really seem like they wanted to take pictures or sign autographs but after running up and asking they said of course and I was able to sneak away with a picture with the lead singer.
All in all it was a lot of fun. The beach wasn’t nearly as polluted as I thought it was going to be so it was actually tons of fun. It kind of felt like a treasure hunt…except the treasure was trash. But, looking back it was so much fun and getting to see the Barenaked Ladies afterwards made it even better. I would totally do it again.